Althought it has crept onto some Sky customer's Sky+HD boxes this week, the non-channel ITV HD is still officially only available via the red button on FreeSat. It is strongly rumoured to be one of the HD channels to arrive on Virgin Media this year, but will it be worth the wait?
Here are all the programmes on ITV HD in the next seven days:
Saturday, 3.35pm Film: Thunderbirds (the 2004 live action yawn)
Saturday, 9pm Film: About A Boy
Sunday, 9pm Wild at Heart
Monday, 9pm Law & Order: UK
Friday, 9pm Moving Wallpaper
And that's it. For the entire week. Hardly worth the wait, I think you'll agree; three hours of TV and two mediocre films. They don't even show the two quality ITV1 US imports, Dexter and Pushing Daisies, in HD. Apart from the Champions League and FA Cup games, this hardly deserves a fanfare if it does finally arrive.
12 comments:
That's a very unrepresenative week. Normally there is football on every week once a week which is precisely once a week more than BBC HD show football most of the time. As for the films, averaged over several months there have been some pretty cool films on like Star Wars. Again a vast improvement on BBC HD. It's most of the things BBC HD isn't, which is kind of good in a freebie way.
Any live sport in HD is welcome but we have just five more Champions League and three FA Cup and that's it for this season. Also, ITV rarely shows its movies in HD - this week ITV1 is showing 'View To A Kill' and it's not in HD. In fact there are very few films on ITV1 and it will be C4HD (if it ever arrives) that will bring more HD movies to VM.
I disagree that it will be a vast improvement on BBC HD - that for me is still the most varied and has the highest quality HD programming. Just too many repeats.
I do find it amusing that ITV HD is criticised here for lack of actual High Definition content! The irony is that it isn't available on Virgin, so the blogger is effectively saying he'd rather have no ITV HD than some!!!
Also, when CH4HD launched, I remember similar remarks being made at lack of content-no one is saying that now (and it is also not available on Virgin).
It seems to me that it's "grasping at straws" to comment on the comparitive lack of HD content on channels not available to Virgin customers.
I find it no consolation at all that ITV HD doesn't show wall to wall HD while we only have the BBCHD content! I want the BBC HD AND the ITV HD channels and anything else as well! I think the time for moaning about their actual lack of content (or amount of repeats) is when Virgin actually carries the channel!
Bitter much???
"The blogger is effectively saying he'd rather have no ITV HD than some"?
That's not what I was saying at all - I was warning folk that if/when ITV HD arrives, don't expect it to be wall-to-wall HD, and if VM tout it as a major new HD channel, they're being somewhat economic with the facts.
Any additional HD content will be warmly welcomed by me...but it'll take more than the arrival of ITV HD to convince me that VM are serious about it.
Agree with Sirius on C4HD - that's looking pretty good now, especially on the movie front at weekends.
That's a real shame Pushing Daisies isn't in HD here, as its use use of light and color is unique on TV: it's just the sort of drama to provide an HD "wow" factor. See this Layer Cake post.
I agree - I fell for this series with the excellent first episode but find the fabulous cinematography too blocky on SD. Looks great on DVD though ;o)
The wait is over. It hasn't arrived along with whatever the other 3 channels were supposed to be according to Liar Burkett.
How can we make his lie a DSpy headline?
I'd give them until the end of the month/quarter before trying to get Digital Spy to run a story. Here's what he actually said last December, which looks more ambiguous each time I read it: "To date our HD content is limited, we only have a couple of HD channels today and we will be launching four channels over the next three months." He doesn't actually say that the four channels will be HD - it's just implied by the context.
Email Neil Wilkes direct at DS to turn a complaint into a headline, but he'll stop short of calling Mr Berkett a "liar" (as would I) but may refer to broken promises or a similar, less personal phrase.
The implication is more than obvious. If he was referring to the new Blighty channel, Yesterday etc then he purposefully used the spin to deceive, leaving me more agrieved than the alternative, a broken promise....
ITV is showing Wild at Heart in HD? A David Lynch film in HD on Prime Time ITV?!? Maybe the channel is as utterly pointless as I'd imagined (CL apart).
If only...http://www.itv.com/Drama/family/wildatheart/default.html
Oh right. I feel quite foolish now. :D
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